Learn how to improve your passing with a volleyball skills video on this page.
How do you pass a volleyball?
a) Anticipate where the ball is heading and quickly move to get the middle of your body behind the ball.
b) Hold your wrists together keeping elbows straight to form a "platform" which is what you use to make contact with the ball.
c) With bent knees and in an athletic stance with hips lower than the oncoming ball, contact the ball with your platform keeping arms very straight so the ball contacts your arms only once.
d) Angle the platform by dropping your shoulder in the direction of where you want the ball to go before you guide it to your setter, or to another hitter or even across the net.
Here are my five volleyball passing tips you should learn that will help you get the ball to your setter while on serve receive.
The volleyball forearm pass is a super important serve receive skill players use to initiate their team's offensive plays once the opposing team has served the ball into their court.
I like to teach the following forearm passing instruction which pinpoints five different things you should remember to do when you are looking to control the ball while trying to pass it to your setter.
Whether you are just learning how to play volleyball or have played for awhile and are having problems with your passing, I suggest you pick one of these elements to work on, one at a time, while you are doing your passing drills in practice.
These 21 volleyball pass tips describe how you should pass the ball starting from when the ball is in the opposing server's hands until you completely finish your passing action.
Keep your feet shoulder width apart with your legs slightly bent.
Having your right foot - inches in front of the left lets you move quickly in any direction.
-Do the opposite if you’e a lefty.
Present your platform by wrapping your left hand around your right fist, thumbs pointing straight down to the ground.
-This positions your elbows and arms in a straight platform.
Contact the ball on your forearms.
-Check that your thumbs are always pointing to the ground, maintaining the straight platform needed to pass the ball.
Keep your elbows straight while passing.
Straight elbows maintain a wider platform, giving you maximum control of the ball
Looking for a variation to your partner passing drills?
What can you do if you have an odd number of players?
During your practice warmups after you do the traditional passing back and forth, try combining a group of two players with a group of three players for some cross court digging reps.
In the group of three, after the passer passes, they follow their ball to the other side and turn around quickly to pass the next ball.
At this point in the video, we, oops sorry “they” had been passing nonstop for at least 4-5 minutes following different patterns and directions that I called out. Stopping the ball wasn’t allowed. I explained everything while everyone was passing. 1000 reps a day make you better faster, remember?
I’ll show you in a later post another version of my volleyball ball control drills that can be done with a group of 5 or even 7 passers working together with two balls moving at the same time.
Volleyball Skills Video on Passing:
🏐Proper technique while passing under pressure. Everyone works together as a group of five because everyone has to work together to control their ball so it doesn’t get in the path of the other player’s ball or drift too far off course forcing the drill to stop.
🏐Wide vision - Many players play with tunnel vision on the court. When they focus on the ball..that’s the ONLY thing they see. As you’ve seen in many of my drills we work on “wide vision” where as a player I can focus on the ball but I use my peripheral vision (look up that word), without turning my head, to see and have a feel for who and what’s happening on my right and on my left.
🏐Quick feet while traveling low. The group of three decided they’d pass the lower ball so the two balls wouldn’t contact in the air. The lower pass means they have to move faster to get to the other side while controlling the ball and getting it right to the target.
🏐Communication. Talk, talk, talk, talk about everything important that is going on. Anticipating where the ball could go, who needs to move where. Talking helps you stay in the present. You can’t think about your last mistake if you’re talking to your teammate about the short pass that’s coming.
When you want to take your partner passing drill …to another level...Here's an example of what we do in our passing skills progression.
After warming up as usual with normal partner passing…with the person in front of them, they then in a group of four had to pass clockwise to the person on their right.
Then when I called “cross court”…the players had to decide when they’d switch partners in mid drill and start passing with the partner across from them
(Volume up…you hear me call out what they need to do and the group works together to delegate or problem solve.)
This is exactly what happens on the court…someone has to take charge, whether its a front row captain or a backrow captain…and the others have to trust, listen and follow. At higher levels of play, players have to figure out how to be and get on the same page….faster. .
Just like in the previous video, we are still working on
🏐team communication
🏐problem solving and .
🏐quick decision making but there’s a bigger emphasis on the next three…
🏐listening .
🏐building trusting and
🏐using wide vision/peripheral vision.
What I mean by that is watching the ball but still “seeing” and feeling what your teammate on your right and on your left are doing…..all while maintaining good form and proper technique.
There’s one more important thing we are working on and that’s staying calm and controlled in a chaotic situation...
What do you need to do now? You have three options:
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-Coach April
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